My DNA vending machine

Vending machines generally offer up sodas, candy bars and chips. Not so for the one created by TED Fellow Gabe Barcia-Colombo. This artist has dreamed up a DNA Vending Machine, which dispenses extracted human DNA, packaged in a vial along with a collectible photo of the person who gave it. It’s charming and quirky, but points out larger ethical issues that will arise as access to biotechnology increases.

This is a vending machine in Los Angeles.

It's in a shopping mall,
and it sells fish eggs.

It's a caviar-vending machine.

This is the Art-o-mat,
an art-vending machine

that sells small artistic creations
by different artists,

usually on small wood blocks
or matchboxes, in limited edition.

This is Oliver Medvedik.

He is not a vending machine,
but he is one of the founders of Genspace,

a community biolab in Brooklyn, New York,

where anybody can go and take classes

and learn how to do things
like grow E. coli that glows in the dark

or learn how to take strawberry DNA.

In fact, I saw Oliver do
one of these strawberry DNA extractions

about a year ago, and this is what led me
into this bizarre path

that I'm going to talk to you right now.

Strawberry DNA is really fascinating,
because it's so beautiful.

I'd never thought about DNA
being a beautiful thing before,

before I saw it in this form.

A lot of people, especially
in the art community,

don't necessarily engage
in science in this way.

I instantly joined Genspace after this,

and asked Oliver, "If we can do
this with strawberries,

can we do this with people?"

About 10 minutes later,
we were both spitting in vials,

coming up with a protocol
for human DNA extraction.

I started doing this on my own.

This is what my DNA actually looks like.

And I was at a dinner party
with some artist friends,

and I was telling them about this project,

and they couldn't believe
that you could actually see DNA.

So I said, all right, let's get out
some supplies right now.

And I started having these bizarre
dinner parties on Friday nights,

where people would come over
and we'd do DNA extractions,

and I would capture them on video,

because it created
this kind of funny portrait as well.

(Laughter)

These are people who don't necessarily
regularly engage with science.

You can kind of tell from their reactions.

(Laughter)

But they became fascinated by it,

and it was really exciting for me
to see them get excited about science.

And so I started doing this regularly.

(Laughter)

It's an odd thing to do
with your Friday nights,

but this is what I started doing.

I started collecting a whole group
of my friends' DNA in small vials

and categorizing them.

This is what that looked like.

And it started to make me think
about a couple of things.

First, this looked a lot
like my Facebook wall.

So in a way, I created
sort of a genetic social network.

And the second thing was,

one time a friend came over
and looked at this on my table

and was like,
"Uh ... why are they numbered?

Is this person more rare
than the other one?"

And I hadn't even thought about that.

They were just numbered

because that was the order
that I extracted the DNA in.

But that made me think
about collecting toys,

and what's going on right now
in the toy world with blind box toys,

and being able to collect these rare toys.

You buy these boxes, but aren't sure
what's going to be inside.

But when you open them,
you have different rarities of the toys.

I thought that was interesting;
I thought about this

and the caviar vending machine
and the Art-o-mat all together.

And for some reason, I was one night
drawing a vending machine,

thinking of doing paintings
of a vending machine.

The vial of my DNA was sitting there,

and I saw a beautiful collaboration
between the strands of DNA

and the coils of a vending machine.

So I decided to create an art installation
called the DNA Vending Machine.

Here it is.

(Music)

[DNA Vending Machine
is an art installation

about our increasing access
to biotechnology.]

(Music)

[For a reasonable cost,
you can purchase a sample of human DNA

from a traditional vending machine.]

(Music)

[Each sample comes packaged

with a collectible limited edition
portrait of the human specimen.]

(Music)

[DNA Vending Machine treats DNA
as a collectible material

and brings to light legal issues
over the ownership of DNA.]

(Music ends)

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo:

The DNA Vending Machine is currently
in a couple of galleries in New York,

and it's selling out pretty well.

We're in the first edition of 100 pieces,

hoping to do another edition pretty soon.

I'd like to get it
into more of a metro hub,

like Grand Central or Penn Station,

next to some of the other
vending machines in that location.

But really, with this
and a lot of my art projects,

I want to ask the audience a question:

When biotechnology and DNA sequencing
becomes as cheap as, say, laser cutting

or 3D printing or buying caviar
from a vending machine,

will you submit your sample of DNA
to be part of the vending machine?

How much will these samples be worth?

Will you buy someone else's sample?

And what will you be able to do
with that sample?

Thank you.

(Applause)